I own an LTE through TMob. I don't do alot on it - I get text, email, use GPS when I run, A little bit on the phone but not alot. My battery life is erratic. Mostly its connected to trying to find a signal when I'm traveling outside coverage areas - at least I think so. When I do that my battery life drops about 10% every 15-20 mins. Anyone have any ideas on how to prevent it from constantly searching for a signal? Current I have to remember to switch it to airplane mode when I'm in the sticks then remember to turn it back on later.
Even on my phone I cut the GSM signal when I am in no coverage zone
Well I guess that's that. Thanks!
Related
I have a huge battery drain, and i think that is because i have low signal (look at the picture).
I tried to recalibrate battery for two times, and use it for 2-3 days, but it's alway the same.
I get maybe 7h with normal use. 50% of the time with 3G/EDGE, 50% with WIFI. screen time 1h, and turned off Auto sync.
Can someone help me? I need my phone whole day, not 7h. :S
EDIT: I'm using stock 4.0.4 with matr1x kernel
Bump?
Can't really help you as cell reception is based on the quality of the carrier. I normally experience -95 dBm and I believe it is a cause for such high drain too.
The only thing I could recommend is try flashing a different radio and see if you get a better signal?
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA
BetterBatteryStats can let you know if it's not the radio. To test if it is the radio, try switching to 2G only.
Well, it was 3G-s fault. I switched to 2G and now there is no battery drain.
BUT, i still don't know why is there no 3G network in my house.
I have SGSII on my shelf, with the same carrier and it has 3G.
There is 3G at your house. It is just weak, much like me. A few too many concrete walls where i'm at.
Cell signals are done through waves which have to penetrate through walls and other solid objects, this vastly weakens the signal. Once you hit the ~-100dB mark your phone will start throwing more power into it's antenna to compensate, much further and it ditches 3G and goes to 2G assuming it has better coverage. Around the 100dB mark it tends to stay with 3G if data is on though which can start chewing through battery. It would be able to play around with the parameters but i don't see this happening anytime soon.
Compare the dB reading on your SGS2 and Nexus S. If it's much worse on the Nexus S, try flashing a different radio.
I have the same problem, i just switch back to 2g when i get back home and at night. for some reason, 2g networks tend to always have stronger reception
Hi,
I've searched around on the SGS4G forums, but haven't seemed to find a definitive answer to this question.
If you live in an area where you get good 3G/4G coverage, is it worth having power save options switch your phone to 2G when you turn off the screen for a while (e.g., AOKP's power saver option to switch to 2G after screen off)? As I understand it, turning off that connection will drain additional battery versus just continuing to use the 3G/4G signal that the phone is on. Are the battery use benefits of 2G more than the power cost to switch it off?
If anybody has done an analysis of this, I'd be glad to hear your results. From my own personal experience, it seems like I get slightly better battery life sticking with 3G/4G instead of turning it down to 2G when on standby.
Cheers
FB used the power save recently and got 28hours on a single charge. I think he lives in a decent coverage area.
Was he using a standard battery? That's an impressive amount. Even when I was back on a fresh Octane install and running only essential apps, I got 20 hours at best.
I got 28 hours but only had 34 mins of screen on time. I wasn't using my phone at all, but had 53% battery left when I told eollie that.
Normally with about an hour's screen on time I'm at 50% battery. I tend to get a little over 2 hours of screen on time on a full battery, WITHOUT power saver.
I wasn't able to continue using power saver recently since I'm working on the AOKP update but shh! Keep this between us.
EDIT
I get around 1-2 bars on 3/4G
I get 3-4 bars on Edge
I think so.
Here's what you can do if you leave it on your desk with the sim card out. lol Still at 58%.
Haha, yeah, figured. Well, normally I get 3-4 bars on 3/4G, and leaving it on my nightstand in the morning, I get about 1-2% drain per hour if I don't touch it at all. So I can definitely see getting days of battery on just standby with nothing running.
AOKP update. Yeus. Can't wait!
Another good tip for battery life, if you'd like to know it, is to have a single colored dark background. Even better if your icons are darker. If you use a totally black background, with dark-colored icons, it can really help conserve battery. Well, I don't know if it's anything substantial, but it will help.
There isn't much "factual" information out there on 2G vs. 3G/HDSPA power consumption that I could find.
http://blog.famzah.net/2010/05/24/2g-gprs-vs-3g-umts-connection-battery-usage-on-mobile-phones/ suggests that the idle consumption is comparable between 2G and 3G on their specific phone. It also suggests that 3G, when you are transferring data, consumes less energy than 2G since the data can be transferred in a significantly shorter period of time.
Anyone else noticed this? In areas of med to low LTE signal (-109 dBm), there are times when something locks up inside the radio and Signal Strength under Status will never change again no matter where I move the phone. During this funky mode, the battery is dropping rapidly during idle... Maybe 10% per hour. Something is wrong. During this same time android battery history shows yellow medium signal and voice calls work fine. There is also no runaway process cpu ussage or awake time. The only thing wrong and drawing too much juice is radio. If I toggle airplane mode or toggle wifi off/on the problem is solved for a while. I have VRALF2 firmware.
same problems here
Scrappy1 said:
Anyone else noticed this? In areas of med to low LTE signal (-109 dBm), there are times when something locks up inside the radio and Signal Strength under Status will never change again no matter where I move the phone. During this funky mode, the battery is dropping rapidly during idle... Maybe 10% per hour. Something is wrong. During this same time android battery history shows yellow medium signal and voice calls work fine. There is also no runaway process cpu ussage or awake time. The only thing wrong and drawing too much juice is radio. If I toggle airplane mode or toggle wifi off/on the problem is solved for a while. I have VRALF2 firmware.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same problem. Have went through many sim cards and factory resets. After 5 phone I finally have one that holds the signal a little better and does not go into this "funky mode". With the previous 4 (white 32gig) verizon phone I would burn through a battery in 6 hours at work. It would start with a drop in signal strengh at around -93 or so. Nothing would fix it. I finally got a blue 32gig and it seems to hold the signal to around -99. I don't know if I got a better batch of phones. But it seems to help me get through a day at work.
Scrappy1 said:
Anyone else noticed this? In areas of med to low LTE signal (-109 dBm), there are times when something locks up inside the radio and Signal Strength under Status will never change again no matter where I move the phone. During this funky mode, the battery is dropping rapidly during idle... Maybe 10% per hour. Something is wrong. During this same time android battery history shows yellow medium signal and voice calls work fine. There is also no runaway process cpu ussage or awake time. The only thing wrong and drawing too much juice is radio. If I toggle airplane mode or toggle wifi off/on the problem is solved for a while. I have VRALF2 firmware.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's not normal. Where I work I get 3g primarily but also 4g in the front of the building.....in the far back I get 1x. I have had my phone totally drop data for a while (like the radio sleeps or something) but never had the radio stick between 4g and 3g. I also live right on the edge of a 4g/3g line and my dbm right now is 111 on 4g LTE......If this was normal I would have had the situation your having since my signal is basically identical to yours. I would return it or at the very least contact Samsung. I'm sure Samsung will tell you to send it in for repair.
I have very weak signal at my house also. S3 switches from LTE to 3G and 1X and sometimes loosing signal completely downstairs but upstairs usually I get solid LTE with around -99dBm and ~10Mbps transfers. During this network jumping my battery drains very fast also but I never had my radio constantly locked at one frequency or signal strength. And I can directly compare signal reception to my wife's Fascinate and S3 loses this competition badly. Fascinate never completely lost signal at our house and it rarely jumps to 1X.
I did a factory reset yesterday and so far so good... I''ll update as time goes on.
As far as signal strength goes in general,my wife's Droid Charge always pulls in a few more LTE dBm's than my GS3. Based on general public feedback, GS3 is below average on signal and radio issues. It's too bad because the rest of the phone is above average.
It's been 2 days after the factory reset and no problems with battery drain or radio lock up.
The only app that I could maybe try and blame is Elixir 2's create widget feature for signal strength. This always returned bogus values and may have embedded itself at an unholy level. Simply uninstalling elixir 2 didn't fix it.
If anyone still cares... I found my radio lockup and battery drain issues returned only after I reinstalled Better Battery Stats. I again removed it and will see if I stay good.
I have realised something with all the Samsung Android's I've used over the years.
When one has been in a known area with mobile data on, regardless of wifi state, like home or work, standby battery drain is normal, 1% per 1-3 hrs. However, when one begins to travel, with mobile data on, battery idle drain becomes 1% per 10-20 minutes pretty immediately.
This is regardless of whether Wifi is On or Off (obviously disconnected in both cases).
I have ran so many tests on this with the S3, S5, N2 and N3, and all the results are the same, battery drain goes wild when one begins to travel.
I have tried turning location on/off, syncing on/off and again results are pretty much exactly the same.
It's got to be something to do with how well the phones deal with handshakes from cell tower to cell tower, but it really shouldn't eat the battery so much. The iPhone for example performs much better in this situation.
Has anyone come across this and any ideas?
I will try to explain what may is the problem in simple words. I am studying computer and electronic engineering and we had a class this semester based on phone signals.
When you stay at home your phone is connected on the phone company's antenna. To connect you need to exchange some info so i think this will consume some power. Also one you are connected the amount of data receiving and sending are the minimum possible.
When you travel your phone has to keep connect on an other antenna and keep searching for signal. Many connecting tries may fail due to bad signal and based on the phone and the company, if your phone keep change on 3G for better signal this "change" is that consumes much power.
This is probably the reason. I may be wrong because we did only some base things over the wireless communications signals.
Different phones operate different on the signal density. Good density better signal = better battery life
Hey guys
I've had this phoen a few weeks, and battery life has been great. Idles well, whether on wifi or 4g....phone idles very well, 2 to 4% per hour.
I recently had my desk moved to an area where cell coverage is BAD. Even on wifi, you can see t he icon go from 3g to 1x, back n forth. signal is weak...but enough to make calls and txt. This is KILLING my battery. I lose 8 to 12% an hour during idling.
Is this normal for phones in dead areas? ANy suggestions?
Thanks
docluv01 said:
Hey guys
I've had this phoen a few weeks, and battery life has been great. Idles well, whether on wifi or 4g....phone idles very well, 2 to 4% per hour.
I recently had my desk moved to an area where cell coverage is BAD. Even on wifi, you can see t he icon go from 3g to 1x, back n forth. signal is weak...but enough to make calls and txt. This is KILLING my battery. I lose 8 to 12% an hour during idling.
Is this normal for phones in dead areas? ANy suggestions?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, that sounds normal for the conditions you described. Being in an area where the radio is constantly losing signal and having to reconnect is a very large drain on the battery.
Not much you can do unless you get a signal booster installed.
wishfull thinking i geuss, haha
Previous phones, I would just change the network to just 1x. this usually helped...
Thanks!!!
Not to dig up an old thread....but this is gettign worse...
If I get a network extender (provided I can get it to get GPS), will this prevent the phone from constantly looking? or will the phone still search...
Thanks!